


Embers

by MirrorMystic



Series: Among Eagles [3]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Action/Adventure, Developing Relationship, F/F, Gen, Multi, Space Opera, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-06-11
Packaged: 2019-05-21 01:50:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14906174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MirrorMystic/pseuds/MirrorMystic
Summary: The Sparrow departs Persephone with another case closed and another member for the team, eager to leave her past behind her. The sun never shone on Persephone. But even after breaking through the clouds and finally taking flight, the stars, and their light, still seem so far away.Life aboard a starship is a daunting prospect- a dozen souls in a fragile metal casket, flying into the vast unknown. In that darkness, there is still light- but there are also daemons, inside and out...





	Embers

**Author's Note:**

> Kept you waiting, huh? 
> 
> It's been almost a month since I first started this doc, so I'm glad to finally see it come to fruition- and I hope you will be, too. Compared to 'Persephone', this one's a bit of a breather- but only because I have Plans (tm) for this crew, big plans, I tell you. I hope you all enjoy the read! ^^

~*~  
  
“Aabha?”  
  
Kit murmured in the dark, gazing up at the ceiling of their cabin aboard the Sparrow. She glanced at Aabha, a bundle of knit wool and tousled hair on the opposite cot.  
  
“Hey, Aabha. Are you awake?”  
  
A mote of green light shimmered across Kit’s fingertips. She waved her hand, thinking to rouse Aabha awake with a conjured wind. All she succeeded in doing was getting Aabha to roll over in bed, her hair falling across her serene face in a way that made Kit grin like an idiot. .  
  
Kit sat up, amused by Aabha’s big, dopey, drowsy grin. Even smiling in her sleep, Kit couldn’t help but smile back.  
  
Kit raised her hands above her head and stretched, her spine popping. She let out a sigh, cast in the dim glow of the recessed lighting built into the floor. The lights were dimmed for night cycle, the Sparrow’s systems automatically dimming and brightening the lights as an indicator of the passage of time. For people who were used to life on land, the artificial sunrise and sunset were, supposedly, a courtesy.  
  
Kit had been here almost three weeks, and she still hadn’t gotten used to it. Night cycle or not, she couldn’t sleep. And, judging by the third, empty cot at the head of her shared cabin, she wasn’t the only one.  
  
Kit frowned, and pulled on her boots. Time to take a walk.  
  
~*~  
  
Lily sat in the Sparrow’s lounge, cast in the eerie azure glow of hyperspace. Ribbons of sapphire light coiled around the ship’s hull, crackling with energy. Not unlike the violet aurora in the skies over Persephone, Lily thought.  
  
Lily scowled. She reached up from the couch she was sitting on and clicked the shutter control stud on the wall. A retractable section of the Sparrow’s armored hull slid over the window, leaving Lily in the dark.  
  
Lily blew out a sigh, shivering the corkscrews of her hair. This wasn’t like her. Getting up in the middle of the night, feeling sorry for herself. Here, on an unfamiliar ship, surrounded by unfamiliar faces, all because the ones who _were_ familiar had become too hard to bear.  
  
Brooding, in other words. Lila would scoff.  
  
Lily blinked, and fished her comm out of her pocket. As she sat there, in the dark, her comm became her lifeline- her light. She flicked a thumb down the screen, scrolling through her message history with Lila. Her most recent message sat at the bottom of the screen, typed but unsent. It would stay unsent until they finally dropped out of hyperspace- a signal issue, Aabha had explained to her. Or, as Kit had put it, “hyperspace is kinda fucky”.  
  
Lily broke into a ghost of a smile. She sighed, pocketed her comm, and got to her feet, feeling silly for all this melodrama. Maybe a walk would have her feeling like herself again.  
  
Lily stepped out of the crew lounge, lingering in front of the row of crew cabins arrayed along the wall. Four doors and four nameplates, all in a row: Jaki, Vincent, Yuna. And then there was Aabha’s, with a hand-drawn sign bearing her name taped to the door. A cheerful “and Kit!” had been recently added underneath.  
  
Lily glanced up and down the main corridor that ran the length of the ship. She was on the second deck- the crew deck. Behind her, the kitchen, lounge, and infirmary. Upstairs, the bridge, control room, and officer’s quarters. Downstairs, the cargo bay, the engine room...  
  
And fewer people to witness her melancholy. Downstairs, it was.  
  
Lily followed the spinal hallway down, the grilled mesh deck becoming the bare metal balcony overlooking the high-ceilinged cargo bay. A pair of Remora-class anti-gravity skimmers hung from the ceiling on crane hoists. Presumably, this was for practical reasons- keeping them near the balcony so they were accessible for maintenance and repairs, as well as freeing up floorspace on the cargo deck proper- but Lily thought they looked like museum pieces, like a pair of great, prehistoric beasts, hanging from the rafters for students to gape at and bear witness.  
  
Lily sighed. She pulled out her comm, saw her still-unsent message to Lila, then stuffed it back in her pocket, wondering what exactly she expected to see.  
  
Lily clutched the balcony rail, letting out a melancholy sigh. Then she buried her head in her arms and groaned, clutching at her head.  
  
Here she was, _brooding_ again…  
  
A strange, electronic warbling filled Lily’s ears, distracting her from her unquiet mind. She blinked, and lifted her head. Something bumped into her head from above.  
  
“Ow. Hey,” Lily grumbled, glancing up. A softball-sized sphere of molded white plasteel floated at eye-level on an anti-gravity field, looking like an egg due to its single, glowing yellow eye. The shutters around its optics flicked, as if blinking, before floating past Lily and over the edge of the balcony rail, its miniature hover-engine warbling the whole time.  
  
Lily blinked, puzzled, and allowed her curiosity to pull her down the balcony steps and onto the cargo deck, where the drone disappeared into a hatchway.  
  
Lily stepped into the Sparrow’s engine room, and walked headfirst into a wall of sound. The ship’s drive core emitted a constant thrumming. Aabha, who’d spent most of her adult life (which, admittedly, was only a few years) on spaceships, had described the constant noise of the drive core as “comforting”- like the ship itself was breathing in its sleep.  
  
Snoring, more like it, Lily thought, as she stood there, bombarded by sound from every side. The drone appeared, whirring as its optics adjusted their focus, before vanishing around a corner. Lily pursed her lips and followed it-  
  
-only to stop just short of tripping over an older woman, doubled over in front of a toolbox.  
  
“Oh! Sorry!” Lily blurted out, to the other woman’s apparent indifference. She flexed her fingers inside her gloves, and the drone obediently powered down, falling into a waiting hand. She socketed it into a charging station, before continuing to rummage through her tools.  
  
“Uh…” Lily blinked. “Hi…?”  
  
Nothing. Lily cleared her throat,  
  
“I’m, uh, I’m Lily. I’m new.”  
  
Still nothing. Lily shifted her weight on her heels, awkward.  
  
The woman- the chief engineer, Lily assumed- was shorter than Lily, but broad and powerfully built, presumably from a lifetime of heavy lifting. Lily took a moment to appreciate- and, let’s be honest, _envy_ \- the sculpted lines of the older woman’s back, arms, and shoulders, and the way her long, tightly-coiled braids falling across those curves only accentuated her physique.  
  
It belatedly occurred to Lily that it was rude to stare- at about the same moment the woman caught her staring.  
  
“Sorry,” Lily said. “Uh. What are you, uh… what are you working on?”  
  
The woman pulled off her gloves, tossing them into her toolbox alongside a number of disassembled drones. Lily could see the glinting silver lines of haptic circuitry, embedded within the skin of her hands and fingertips. She looked up at Lily, blinking, as if noticing her for the first time. She tapped her ear twice with one finger.  
  
Lily glanced around, and supposed that the engine room was pretty loud.  
  
Lily tried raising her voice above the engine hum. “I said, ‘What are you working on?’”  
  
“She’s deaf,” Kit said, so abruptly Lily jumped out of her skin.  
  
“What! Where- Who-”  
  
Kit cackled at Lily’s expense, while Lily glowered, coming down from her sudden shock. Kit glanced past Lily and flashed the other woman a grin and a thumbs up- the sign for ‘I don’t know sign language but I’m doing my best’. She shrugged, and returned to her tinkering.  
  
“That’s Shanti,” Kit explained a moment later, when they were both sitting on the balcony again, their legs dangling off the edge. “She’s the Chief Engineer. Practically lives in the engine room.”  
  
“Doesn’t get out much, does she?”  
  
“No, I mean, she has a hammock in the engine room because her actual room’s two decks away.”  
  
“Practical,” Lily nodded. “So. What’s her story?”  
  
“She’s a war vet, or so I hear,” Kit said. “She lost her hearing in an artillery bombardment on her homeworld, Corinth. She was a farmer before the war, had a bunch of drones programmed for field work. Then Malice invaded her planet, and I guess she had to improvise.”  
  
Lily looked up. “Malice?”  
  
Kit gave her a strange look. “You really haven’t gotten out much, have you?”  
  
Lily gave Kit’s shoulder a playfully indignant shove. “Okay, well, how many planets have _you_ been to?”  
  
“Just the one,” Kit said, shoving back. “But, I dunno? I read? I go on the extranet occasionally?”  
  
Lily glanced down at where Kit shoved her, and shoved her back again. Kit squeaked in indignation, and shoved her back. They were on the verge of a full-blown slappy fight when Aabha appeared at the top of the steps.  
  
“There you are!” Aabha said, descending the stairs from the crew deck in a crimson nightgown that made her look, as always, effortlessly graceful. “I was looking for you two. Couldn’t sleep?”  
  
Kit shrugged and murmured a non-response. Lily hesitated, and blew out a sigh.  
  
“I’ve, uh… had a lot on my mind,” she said.  
  
Aabha nodded, solemn. “...Come on. We should all try to get some rest- we’ve got a busy day ahead of-”  
  
The lights dimmed and the drive core shuddered, like the ship itself was tossing and turning in its sleep. Aabha wobbled precariously and grabbed the balcony rail to steady herself, glancing up as the lights gradually grew back to their previous brightness.  
  
“Uh,” Lily said. “I don’t know too much about ships. But that… that doesn’t seem-”  
  
There was a bang, and everything went dark.  
  
~*~  
  
For one dreadful moment, there was silence. Then Lily took a breath, and the Sparrow gasped back to life, its ventilation systems spinning back up to speed with a clatter of tubes and ducts.  
  
A wisp of yellow fire winked into existence, Aabha’s amber eyes glinting gold in the firelight.  
  
“Are you two okay?” Aabha asked, cupping the conjured flame like a candle in her hands. A general groaning was her answer.  
  
Kit gingerly untangled herself from Lily and Aabha pulled them both to their feet. There was a loud, rhythmic banging coming from below- until one final bang brought the Sparrow’s lights and engine back online, the drive core whirring as it re-engaged.  
  
The captain’s voice crackled over the intra-ship vox.  
  
_“Is everybody alive down there?”_  
  
“Yes!” Aabha called out with a grin, despite it not being a two-way radio.  
  
_“I need everyone outta bed, off their asses, and up in the control room right now. Because Houston? We have a problem.”_  
  
~*~  
  
“Did we hit something?” Morgan wondered.  
  
“More like, something hit _us_ ,” Syl murmured. She nodded a curt greeting to the three girls as they came in, an irritated Shanti at their heels.  
  
“What’s it look like down there, Chief?” asked a woman with rose-tinted glasses. She had choppy, chin-length red hair. Dyed, it looked like- her roots were beginning to show. Robyn Weiss, captain of the Sparrow.  
  
Shanti glanced up at the drone hovering at her shoulder. After a moment to process, it projected a hologram of Robyn’s question for her to read. Shanti crossed her arms, typing- the haptic inlays inside her gloves making it seem like she was just drumming her fingers against her arms.  
  
_Forced detranslation_ , Shanti said, her drone projecting her words in yellow light on the air. _Power, propulsion, and life support are all online. There was a hiccup, but nothing I couldn’t handle. I’m more concerned with what’s strong enough to yank us out of hyperspace._  
  
“Hyperspace _is_ kinda fucky,” Kit nodded sagely. Aabha dug an elbow into her ribs while Lily stifled a laugh.  
  
“Under normal circumstances, the only thing that would force the ship out of hyperspace would be entering a planet’s gravity well,” Robyn explained. She tapped at the holoterminal, and the shimmering view of the Sparrow zoomed out. “Wouldn’t you know it, no planets in sight- just a drifting cargo hauler, no human life signs aboard.”  
  
“That could be another victim of the distortion,” Jaki mused.  
  
_Or its source_ , Shanti said.  
  
“Either way, we’re checking it out,” Robyn ordered. “Everyone, suit up.”  
  
~*~  
  
Aabha opened up her armory locker, and pressed the orb at the center of her badge. Her armor shivered on its mountings, before disappearing in the saffron light of teleport flare and reappearing on her body. Lily and Kit both whistled, impressed.  
  
“Wish _I_ could get dressed like that,” Lily said.  
  
“God, that’s so cool,” Kit grinned.  
  
“Stop…” Aabha blushed. She squeaked as one of Shanti’s drones chidingly bonked her on the head. She turned and saw Shanti herself, rapping her knuckles against a handwritten sign: ‘No Teleporting In the Cargo Bay’.  
  
_Sorry, Chief_ , Aabha signed, sheepish.  
  
There was a loud thunk, followed by a pressurized hiss, as the Sparrow docked with the derelict ship. Moments later, Robyn appeared on the balcony, escorted by a very tall woman with streaks of white and blue in her long, dark hair, horns emerging from her temples like antlers made of coral. Robyn looped an arm around the woman’s waist, leaned up on her toes, and gave her a kiss.  
  
Lily and Kit exchanged glances.  
  
“That’s Yuna,” Aabha whispered. “Her co-pilot.”  
  
“Is _that_ what they call it?” Kit teased.  
  
“Alrighty,” Robyn said, pulling away from Yuna’s embrace and clapping her hands together. “While I’m away, the ship is yours. Take care of her for me.”  
  
“Of course,” Yuna smiled primly. “Be safe.”  
  
“No promises,” Robyn grinned. She turned, and jumped right over the balcony rail.  
  
Just when it looked like Robyn was going to break both her legs in one spectacularly ill-advised act of derring-do, Morgan gave a long suffering sigh and snapped his fingers, conjuring barriers beneath Robyn’s feet. She hopped off the panes of solidified light and landed in the cargo bay, shaking her head at the twins.  
  
“I keep telling you,” Syl said dryly, “as dashing as it would be, you can’t make that jump.”  
  
“You two never let me have any fun,” Robyn pouted.  
  
“Yes, that’s what we’re here for. The fun police,” Syl mused.  
  
“You’re not getting dressed,” Aabha wondered. “Aren’t you coming with us?”  
  
“We’ll be monitoring your progress from the control room,” Morgan said. “We didn’t think it would be appropriate for two senior agents to take part in a salvage operation of dubious legality.”  
  
“It’s perfectly legal,” Robyn protested. “There’s a law about scavenging derelicts.”  
  
“What? ‘Don’t’?” Morgan teased.  
  
“No. It’s called ‘finders keepers’.” Robyn grinned. Morgan just rolled his eyes. “Look, if it’ll make you feel any better, just think of it as ‘checking for survivors’.”  
  
Robyn hit the switch on the door console and the cargo bay doors slid open with a mechanical creak. Aabha, Kit, and Lily strode up to join her.  
  
“Looks like you girls get to spend some time with Auntie Robyn,” Robyn mused. “And since I know Syl’s about to give me grief for it, here- take these.”  
  
Lily caught one of the bundles Robyn tossed their way- a paired set of sleek, plastic devices. She hooked them over her ears and clicked them on. A pale white energy field shimmered to life around her nose and mouth.  
  
“Scans show that freighter’s still got life support, but any good boarding party’s gotta be ready for anything,” Robyn said. She drew a pair of laspistols from her thigh holsters, spun them in her hands, and checked their charge settings. “And I do mean anything.”  
  
“I thought you said there were no life signs aboard,” Aabha said.  
  
“No,” Robyn said. “I said nothing _human_ …”  
  
~*~  
  
The boarding party took their first steps into the murky gloom of the derelict ship, cast in the eerie red glow of its emergency lighting. A hatch opened at the far side of the boarding tube, and they stepped out onto a mesh deck, with pipes and cables looping beneath their feet and strange shadows on the walls.  
  
Robyn took a deep breath, and let out a satisfied sigh.  
  
“...Ah, the sweet smell of a functioning life support system,” Robyn said.  
  
“It stinks, though,” Lily said, waving her hand through the air. “Like rotten meat.”  
  
“Yeah…” Robyn frowned. She tapped at her jawline, activating her breathing mask. “Not what I’d call a good sign.”  
  
The three girls lingered near one another, following anxiously at Robyn’s heels, Jaki bringing up the rear. Lily hadn’t even noticed him join them- for a big man, Jaki moved with surprising silence and subtlety. Unlike the rest of them, Jaki didn’t seem to be bothered at all by the smell, or the unnerving half-light.  
  
“What’s with the lights?” Kit wondered, eyeing the recessed lighting in the walls with suspicion.  
  
“Emergency lighting,” Aabha whispered, “to conserve power, most likely.”  
  
“Does it have to be red?” Lily asked, dryly. The red lights brought to mind unpleasant memories of the neon red logo for Chase Security Solutions, shining over the streets of Persephone.  
  
“They say red is the only color of light that doesn’t disrupt your night vision,” Aabha said. “Although, I don’t know much about that. I think I’d sooner make my own light.”  
  
As if to prove her point, Aabha raised a hand to her lips and blew a kiss across her palm, conjuring a wisp of magicked flame. It floated over her shoulder, casting the three girls in its warm, radiant glow. Kit and Lily both found themselves drawn to its light- a soothing presence on a unsettling night. Then again, that might just have been Aabha.  
  
Kit abruptly realized she was blushing. She cleared her throat and stepped away, glancing at Jaki behind her.  
  
“How about you, or the Captain?” Kit asked. “Don’t you guys want some flashlights or something?”  
  
Jaki shrugged. “We can see in the dark.”  
  
Kit blinked, puzzled, but Jaki ushered her onwards.  
  
They emerged onto a long corridor lined with doors. Their electronic locks had been disabled, thanks to the ship switching to low-power. Aabha slid open a hatch door and discovered a tiny, hole-in-the-wall cell- little more than a closet, desk, and cot.  
  
Lily found a wall-mounted console and activated it with a swipe of her hand. She drew up a map of the ship’s layout.  
  
“Crew quarters,” she called out.  
  
“Crew quarters,” Robyn echoed, frowning. “Alright, riddle me this. So far, we have a cargo freighter that’s switched to emergency power, with life support still functional, with no signs of struggle or, really, any signs of the crew at all…”  
  
“Bridge is straight ahead,” Lily said, studying the map of the ship. “Cargo bay and engineering are both downstairs.”  
  
“Alright. Bridge first, then the cargo bay,” Robyn said. “Maybe we’ll find some answers. Or at least some decent salvage.”  
  
~*~  
  
They burst onto the bridge, guns drawn, only to be greeted by a baffling silence. No bodies, no signs of a struggle- just two dark piloting consoles, a set of lockers in the hall leading to an airlock, and the dim glow of recessed low-power lighting.  
  
Robyn frowned, puzzled. She holstered her pistols and took a seat at the helm, the console flickering to light and life at her touch. Aabha and Kit went rummaging through the lockers, leaving Lily to stand apart, aloof.  
  
There was a chime in her pocket. Lily blinked, and pulled out her comm. She saw Lily’s smiling face, and the blinking notification for unread messages. Now that they were out of hyperspace, her comm was getting reception again. She flicked down the screen, reading.  
  
**_Lila_** _: This place is amazing, Lily. I’d send you pics, but I think Agent Crane would throw a fit. Top secret, you know._ _  
_**_Lila_** _: How’s life on a spaceship treating you? Getting out there, seeing the galaxy… honestly, I kinda wish I was right there with you, instead of spending most of my time getting interviewed._ _  
_**_Lila_** _: Someday, maybe, once they let me out of here. Fingers crossed. :)_ _  
_**_Lila_** _: How are you feeling, though? You said, before, you were feeling homesick._  
  
Lily’s eyes flicked guiltily towards Aabha and Kit. She blew out a sigh, typing.  
  
**_Lily_** _: That place will never be home to me. I don’t miss Persephone, Lila._ _  
_**_Lily_** _: I miss you._  
  
“Who are you texting, your boyfriend?” Kit teased. Lily rolled her eyes.  
  
“My _sister_ , you asshole,” Lily grumbled, but she was smiling nonetheless.  
  
“Come on,” Kit said, taking Lily’s wrist and tugging her towards the lockers. “You’re missing out on all the loot.”  
  
Lily watched as Aabha painstakingly packed a storage crate full of power cells, dry rations, ammunition, and various other odds and ends they found in the derelict freighter’s armory locker. Aabha tucked everything away neatly and efficiently, shut the crate, and slapped a little metal device on top. The portable teleport beacon clamped to the top of the crate and began broadcasting its position. A moment later, the crate disappeared in a column of crackling, brilliant blue light.  
  
“Is the Order usually in the habit of picking derelict ships clean?” Lily wondered, bemused.  
  
“Waste not,” Robyn called, still fiddling with the ship’s computer.  
  
“Captain Weiss isn’t technically an Order operative,” Aabha explained. “She and the Sparrow are contracted to bring us where our missions require, but if we’re not on official Order business, she’s just a freelancer. And so are we!”  
  
“Sure,” Kit teased, “because every two-bit mercenary has an award for ‘best-dressed’...”  
  
“You shouldn’t keep saying such nice things about me. I might think you’re serious,” Aabha giggled. She stuck her head back in the locker. “Now, then, let’s see here… guns, guns, guns… random sword-”  
  
“Oh! Lemme see!” Kit asked.  
  
Kit drew the straight, single-edged blade- a simple, spare design of matte black metal, with a single chrome activation stud on the grip. Out of curiosity, Kit clicked it on.  
  
The blade burst into flames in her hands.  
  
Kit screeched. She flailed. She clicked off the stud in the heat blade’s hilt, and shoved it back into its temperature-controlled sheath. She held the still-smoking sheath in both hands and shared nervous glances with Aabha and Lily, laughing shrilly to herself.  
  
“We’re fine! We’re fine! We’re fine...” Kit said, a little too loudly. She took a deep breath, and grinned, sheepish. “...Yeah, so. Um. Dibs.”  
  
Lily chuckled, and clapped a hand on Kit’s shoulder.  
  
“You okay?” Lily asked.  
  
“Yeah, why?”  
  
Aabha smiled fondly and shook her head. “Moving on… let’s see here… more guns… more ammo… oooh, ‘experimental cryo ammo’... nutty caramel ration bars-”  
  
Aabha paused. She tucked the pack into her armor.  
  
“...I’ll take those, and…” Aabha stopped short, lifting one last item out of the locker- a short, but viciously sharp knife, a wire hilt wrapped around a shard of cut obsidian. An athame- a ritual knife, favored by the occultists and daemon summoners of the Blood Pact. Aabha frowned.  
  
“...This…” Aabha said. “...this is a problem.”  
  
Jaki ambled up to the helm and took a seat at the navigator’s chair. He rested his chin on his hand, a tranquil smile on his face.  
  
“...Little Aabha seems happy,” Jaki mused.  
  
“She must be enjoying the variety,” Robyn offered. “Until now, the only other junior on board was Vincent. It must be nice, not being the baby of the group anymore.”  
  
“Where is Vincent, anyway? You’d think he’d be first in line for a scavenging run.”  
  
“I doubt Vincent’s even awake. If he can sleep through evasive maneuvers, he can sleep through a forced detranslation.”  
  
“Mm,” Jaki nodded. “Now Aabha gets to spend some time with girls her own age.”  
  
“Not that anybody on this crew looks their age,” Robyn shrugged. “It’s always either cybernetics this, immortality that… cloning… Fae magic… blood magic…”  
  
Robyn’s jovial mood darkened. She let out an exasperated sigh, tapping at the pilot’s console..  
  
“Look at this, Jaki,” Robyn said, her expression tight and unhappy. “Whoever these guys were, they were running deliveries right in the heart of Alliance space, right under the Order’s nose. Course log on the nav computer shows their destination as the planet Whitefall.”  
  
“I’ve been to Whitefall,” Jaki nodded. “Charming cottages. Spectacular view. Bit colder than I’d like, admittedly.”  
  
“It’s not a vacation, Jaki,” Robyn said. “They weren’t headed to the tourist traps near the equator. They were headed for a facility in the north pole- a corporate black site called Site 17… registered to a certain Adrian Chase.”  
  
Jaki frowned. He turned to the girls, lingering by the airlock.  
  
“Lily.” he began. “Come, child. There’s something you should see…”  
  
~*~  
  
“It doesn’t make sense.”  
  
Lily muttered, shaking her head, as the boarding party marched down from the bridge and onto the clanking metal balconies and walkways of the derelict freighter’s cargo bay.  
  
“It doesn’t make sense,” Lily repeated. “The Dark Star Syndicate are traffickers, extortionists. Adrian Chase was a piece of shit, but he was a mundane, human piece of shit. What the hell was he doing in bed with a cult like the Blood Pact?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Robyn said patiently, “but the fact is, your dad-”  
  
“He’s _not_ my dad,” Lily snapped.  
  
Robyn stopped short, and took a breath. “...I’m sorry. The fact is, a facility under Adrian Chase was receiving shipments from the Blood Pact. I’m not sure what this Site 17 was shipping out, but we _can_ find out what was coming in.”  
  
They stopped before a huge sliding shutter that bisected the cargo bay, sealing the majority of the cargo bay off from the rest of the ship. Aabha tried the control console. It beeped uncooperatively.  
  
“Cargo shutter’s not coming up while the ship is still on emergency power,” Aabha reported.  
  
“Allow me,” Jaki said.  
  
Jaki stepped forward, his stark white thobe gleaming in the eerie glow of the half-lit ship. He shook out his hands, as if he were about to play the piano, his ivory staff crowned with an ankh manifesting between his fingers. He tapped his staff against the ground.  
  
“Let’s recap,” Robyn said, as shadows spread from Jaki’s staff and across the cargo bay floor.  
  
“A Priest, a Paladin, and three Rogues walk through an airlock…” Robyn said, as a curtain of black velvet shrouded the cargo shutter in twinkling, starry darkness. “...after running into a mysterious energy field strong enough to force us out of hyperspace. What we find is a Blood Pact ship, en route to a secret Syndicate facility, with the crew nowhere in sight and the ship running on emergency power. Now, the Blood Pact are real space cases who just _love_ to get caught up in dark magic bullshit they think they can control- and since the last thing we’ve found is a barricade in the cargo bay… I think I can guess what happened to the crew. Father Amaro, if you’d do the honors…?”  
  
Jaki struck his staff against the deck, ringing like a gavel. The shadows shifted across the cargo shutter and forced it up into the roof.  
  
The team recoiled. The stench of decay was overpowering. Clouds of flies filled the air, joining the miasmal darkness that filled the air like smoke. There was a clear and sharp divide between Jaki’s magic and the darkness filling the cargo bay- Jaki’s was soothing, sacred, struck through with violet nebulae and twinkling stars, while the presence looming within the cargo bay was frothy, toxic, corrosive.  
  
“Ugh, god…” Kit cringed. Lily stared, aghast, a hand over her mouth. Aabha stepped forward between them, clasping her hands on their shoulders.  
  
“Behold,” Aabha said, grim. “The Mark of Malice.”  
  
Before them, filling the vast cargo hold from end to end, were rows and rows of shriveled, dessicated husks- things that were once people, sitting or kneeling or bowing in supplication. Their kneeling forms formed a pattern on the cargo deck, some unholy sigil that the party's sanity prevented them from seeing in full. And in the heart of this twisted congregation, there stood a carved stone idol, its twin eyes shining like rubies in the midst of a sandstorm.  
  
“Four gods stand in the shadow of the Eight,” Aabha recited, like a prayer. “Four gods who seek the end of us all. Dogma. Despair. Decay. Destruction…”  
  
“Judging by the clouds of flies, terrible stench, and dried-up worshippers, my money’s on Decay,” Robyn said, adjusting the charge setting on her pistols. “Seth, the Sandstorm, and the slow death of all things. Well, here’s to you, Seth. Ashes to ashes…”  
  
Robyn took aim.  
  
“...Dust to dust.”  
  
The idol exploded.  
  
Robyn’s twin laser bolts burst both rubies within the idol’s eye sockets and sent a thunderous shockwave crashing through the cargo bay. The blast flattened the ranks of withered corpses arrayed around the makeshift shrine, and threw the boarding party off their feet.  
  
Aabha rose, pulling Lily to her feet. A disgruntled Kit took Lily’s offered hand and got up, massaging her aching thigh.  
  
“Hey, remember what I said about getting my own suit of armor?” Kit wondered.  
  
“Maybe after we get off this tomb…” Lily grumbled.  
  
“Don’t call it a tomb,” Aabha chided.  
  
“Isn’t it?” Lily asked, eyes fixed on the far side of the cargo bay. “Look.”  
  
A fell wind swept through the cargo bay, carrying with it the stench of death and something more- dry, dusty, the arid scent of sunbaked earth. The faithful dissolved, crisping and flaking away like leaves on the wind- before the sandstorm took shape within the walls of the hold, and dozens of shining red eyes glinted like hateful stars in a clouded sky…  
  
Robyn staggered to her feet, clutching her head. Her link chirped incessantly in her ear.  
  
“Alright…” Robyn admitted with a groan. “...that worked out a lot better in my head…”  
  
Robyn reached up and keyed in her earpiece, cringing as Morgan’s frantic voice spilled through.  
  
_“-away team! Sparrow to away team! We detected a massive energy pulse at your location. What is your status?”_  
  
Robyn blinked. “...Uh.”  
  
Jaki hoisted Robyn up and dusted her off. The ankh atop his staff glimmered pale white in the rust-brown hold, the air filling with chittering shrieks.  
  
“Tell them you’ll call them back,” Jaki said.  
  
Robyn shrugged, and grinned, and then the sandstorm was upon them.  
  
~*~  
  
Chaos. For one dreadful instant, the whole world became stinging sand and snapping teeth and horrid, howling wind- until Jaki struck his staff against the ground and forced the sandstorm back for just a moment, and the boarding party stood, in the eye of the storm.  
  
Husks emerged from the storm and dove into the dome of clean air Jaki’s barrier created. They were creatures of Malice- warp things, daemon things, assembled from the withered scraps of the freighter’s damned crew and animated with an unholy power. They had claws and stone fangs, and voices like the desert wind. They weren’t human-  
  
-but they died, just the same.  
  
Robyn unloaded into the swarm, her languid demeanor stripped away to a quiet, intense focus, blazing away with both her pistols. Aabha launched her chakrams into the stinging winds, flying of their own accord and blazing trails like comets, cutting apart animated husks and dispelling them into sand. Jaki stood among them, the pillar of the group, focused on maintaining a bubble of clean air within which they could keep their footing- but even he lashed out every now and then, blasting stray husks into ash in flashes of black and violet light.  
  
Kit and Lily just stood back to back, Kit clenching her dagger in her hands, Lily loading her shotgun with numb fingers, both of them still struggling to believe what they were seeing.  
  
“Are you two alright?” Aabha called over her shoulder, her voice all-but-stolen by the howling gale.  
  
“Y-Yeah… it’s just…” Lily murmured, staring at the mayhem unfolding around her.  
  
Kit swallowed hard. She took Lily’s shoulder and squeezed. “...Hey. We’ve got you.”  
  
Their eyes met- warm earth and vivid crimson. Lily nodded.  
  
A husk shrieked and clawed its way through the smoke. Kit recoiled, reaching for her blade- but Lily pulled her aside, her shotgun roaring in her hands.  
  
The blast snap froze the husk’s legs and they shattered with its own momentum, sending its ruined torso crashing to the deck in a cloud of sand and dust. Kit and Lily exchanged glances.  
  
“Huh,” Lily said. She shrugged. “Cryo rounds.”  
  
Aabha flexed her fingers, and her chakrams returned to her waiting hands, each one blazing with magical fire. Kit stepped forward to join her, trusty dagger in one hand, her new, glowing heat blade in the other. Lily joined them, racking her shotgun.  
  
Aabha nodded to each of them in turn, her heart swelling with fondness.  
  
“We’ll take them together.”  
  
The swarm shrieked and surged forward, a tide of shriveled bodies and snapping teeth- and the girls laid waste to them, blades flashing, guns blazing- fire, wind, and ice.  
  
For one shining moment, it seemed like the battle was won- but, like all things, Decay smothered it in the relentless tide.  
  
A storm of lasbolts flew from Robyn’s hands, until she heard the familiar hiss of her pistols overheating. She groaned in frustration, ducking down to eject her power cells and slip in fresh ones.  
  
A shadow leapt from the smoke and pounced. Robyn reflexively raised her aim and fired, her pistol clicking empty. A clawed hand slashed her across the face and threw her to the floor.  
  
“Captain!” Aabha cried.  
  
The husk raised its arm for another swipe. A flying chakram severed it neatly at the elbow, and then the roar of a shotgun blast tore it apart.  
  
Lily helped Robyn to her feet- and gasped. The husk’s claws had left a ragged scratch across her face, but below that, she saw long-healed surgical scarring across Robyn’s temples, and the faint glint of electronic red light in her eyes…  
  
Robyn caught Lily staring. She put on a smile, and pointedly pushed her rose-tinted glasses higher up on her nose, hiding the red glare of her cybernetics.  
  
“Thanks, kiddo,” Robyn said.  
  
Lily blinked. “...Your eyes…”  
  
Robyn waved her hand dismissively. “Later. Jaki!”  
  
“Yes, Captain?”  
  
Robyn clicked in two fresh power cells and busied herself with drowning husks in a hail of lasfire.  
  
“Does this seem like an improbable number of guys to you?” Robyn complained, fighting to be heard over the storm. “How much crew do you need for a ship this size?”  
  
“Perhaps it’s not just the crew,” Jaki said, his mouth curving down in distaste. “Perhaps it’s the cargo, as well.”  
  
Robyn shredded another trio of husks with a blurt of lasfire, dropping a fourth with a single, well-placed shot. In the sandstorm scouring the hull, shadows writhed- dozens more, hundreds more…  
  
“Jaki,” Robyn said grimly, “I think we need some help.”  
  
Jaki hesitated. “Such a request is not one made lightly.”  
  
A cacophonous shriek, and the swarm bore down on them again. Robyn and the girls gave ground by inches, until they were all back-to-back in a circle around Jaki and his staff.  
  
“Well, tell them I’ll pay them back!” Robyn insisted. “We need her!”  
  
Jaki took a deep breath. He sighed, and struck his staff against the ground.  
  
Shadows flickered across the deck, flecked with violet nebulae and distant stars.  
  
_“Hear me, O ancient one, devourer of the dark…”_ _  
__  
_ The charging husks suddenly stopped short, glancing at each other with their baleful red eyes, chittering, screeching in alarm.  
  
_“Summoner,”_ they hissed to each other, warily backing away. _“Summoner…”_  
  
Aabha went stiff. She dispelled her chakrams into curls of flame, conjuring a wisp of warm golden light. Robyn ushered the girls together, gathering them around the flame.  
  
“No matter what happens,” Robyn said, deathly serious, “stay together. Stay in the light.”  
  
Aabha pulled Kit and Lily into her arms, holding them close.  
  
“Don’t look,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “Look at the flame, or look at me. Don’t look outside.”  
  
Jaki struck his staff again, ringing like a funeral bell. Darkness swept across the hold, one so thick that mortal lights could not penetrate it. It smothered up the cargo bay’s dim red emergency lighting, leaving only the cold light of distant stars- and the flame that Aabha held in her hands.  
  
_“Lost souls,”_ Jaki intoned. _“You stand before the scales, and you have strayed from the truth. I cast your bodies into the abyss… and your hearts into Her embrace.”_ _  
__  
_ The sandstorm raged against Jaki’s power, but the darkness could not be breached. Jaki opened his eyes, empty and dark save for a glint of ancient starlight.  
  
Jaki struck his staff against the ground, his voice like a thunderclap.  
  
**_“Ammut take you!”_**  
  
There was a horrid shriek and the grinding of bone- and the darkness rang out with vicious roaring, tearing, the clack of monstrous jaws snapping shut and crunching down, wails of pain and fear. There was something moving in the dark- something beyond knowing, beyond any of them. It shrieked and wailed, it ripped and it tore, and it shivered the walls of the cargo bay with the echoes of catastrophic violence.  
  
The party huddled together in the fragile light cast by Aabha’s wisp, the darkness parting around them like a river around a stone. Aabha screwed her eyes shut and held Kit and Lily close, as Jaki’s summoned nightmare surged through the shadows and tore their enemy apart, leaving their little island of light unscathed.  
  
Then… nothing. Stillness, and silence, save for a faint, distant howling.  
  
Jaki tapped his staff on the deck, and the darkness receded, mundane light reasserting its sway.  
  
“It is done,” Jaki said, reverent.  
  
The cargo bay was covered in a multitude of scrapes, slashes, punctures from teeth, but the sandstorm, and the husks within, had abated- for now. Robyn whistled, long and low.  
  
“I’m glad she’s on our side,” Robyn said.  
  
“She’s on no one’s side,” Jaki chided. “You, too, will see her again, if your heart is heavy.”  
  
Robyn went over and ushered the girls to their feet. Kit whistled, impressed, at the huge gouges cut into the walls and deck. Lily just shook her head, squeezing Aabha’s shoulder.  
  
A foul wind swept across the deck, carrying with it the lingering scent of death and the desert. Jaki frowned.  
  
“The power of Decay is not so easily quelled,” he muttered. “The presence persists. We will have to destroy the freighter, to be sure.”  
  
“Well, we took everything worth taking,” Robyn shrugged. “I just don’t know if the Sparrow’s guns are up to snuff…”  
  
There was a clatter of movement on the walkway above, and Robyn snapped her aim up at the balcony.  
  
Syl emerged from the upper decks, clad in full armor, sword drawn. She listened to the faint howling, the lingering echo of the sandstorm, taking in the sight of the shredded cargo bay. She shrugged.  
  
“...I don’t suppose you left any for me?”  
  
“Hey, you,” Robyn said fondly. Her lips curled into a teasing grin.  “What, were you _worried_ about me?”  
  
“Yes,” Syl said bluntly. “We lost comms for a bit. Interference. I decided you may have needed reinforcements.”  
  
Lily grinned. “So you just came by yourself?”  
  
Kit laughed. “I’ve seen her fight. She would have been plenty.”  
  
“Well,” Syl preened. “I did have some help.”  
  
“So I take it it’s all clear, or…” Vincent appeared beside Syl, carrying a heavy metal case in his arms. He peeked over the railing and waved. “Oh. Hey guys. I, uh, brought a bomb… in case you… needed a bomb.”  
  
The team exchanged glances.  
  
“Well, that works out nicely,” Robyn chirped. “I know just where to put it.”  
  
The party made their way out of the derelict freighter, the sound of howling desert winds growing stronger with every step. They crossed the boarding tube back into the Sparrow, Robyn the last one out. She turned to the wall console to seal the airlock doors-  
  
“Oh, fuck!” Robyn recoiled.  
  
There was a presence behind her- a shadow, wreathed in smoke and sand. A man, dressed all in black, with his head in his hands, weeping. A phantom. An avatar.  
  
_Daemon._  
  
“Get back!” Robyn called, as she hit the controls. The hatch doors slid shut-  
  
The presence opened his mouth in a scream that sounded like the wailing of wind through a desert valley. The sandstorm erupted around him, manifesting into tendrils of sand and earth and wasted, withered flesh. They clamped around the airlock doors and forced them open with a squeal of metal. He stepped inside…  
  
His head exploded in a burst of sand and fire.  
  
Shanti, perched on the balcony, drew back the bolt on her scoped rifle, ejected the spent round, and fired again.  
  
A high-impact round blasted a huge gouge out of the daemon’s pelvis. Another tore out its chest. It staggered, stopped in its tracks. But sand dribbled into its wounds, making it whole again.  
  
The presence wrapped himself in ash and dust, the mirage of the weeping man being swallowed up by a construct of sand, soil, and unholy power. With ominous, creaking steps, it marched up the boarding tube. Aabha summoned her chakrams, ready to fight, as Kit and Lily stood ready beside her.  
  
Shanti keyed in a command with the haptic inlays in her gloves, done so subtly it looked like she was merely adjusting her grip on her rifle.  
  
Then eight hoverdrones burst out of the engine room at her command, fixed the golem in their sights, and obliterated it in a hail of lasfire.  
  
The presence stumbled back into the boarding tube, weeping smoke and cascading sand from hundreds of stippled, burning wounds. Out of the darkness of the freighter beyond, it reached for the light of the Sparrow’s cargo bay-  
  
Robyn shut the hatch in its face and brought a finger to her ear.  
  
“Yuna, go!”  
  
The Sparrow wrenched itself free of the derelict freighter’s boarding tube, venting its atmosphere to space and casting the daemon within into the abyss. A moment later, the bomb Vincent planted in the freighter’s engine room went off, detonating the ship’s volatile drive core.  
  
The infected freighter vanished in a nimbus of heat and light, and the Sparrow took flight, haloed in the flames.  
  
~*~  
  
“Well, that was… something,” Kit said. She was laying in bed, her hands behind her head, gazing up at the ceiling.  
  
“So this is what you do, huh?” Lily wondered.  
  
“Kick names, take ass,” Aabha said sagely.  
  
“That’s not how that goes and you know it,” Kit snickered.  
  
Lily chuckled, and sighed. She folded her hands across her stomach. “You know… when I got up for a walk earlier tonight, I can’t say I expected to wind up fighting daemons.”  
  
“At least we all got something out of it,” Aabha chirped.  
  
Their darkened room suddenly filled with the unmistakable crinkling of a ration bar being unwrapped.  
  
A pause. Then:  
  
“Anybody want a bite?” Aabha asked, her mouth full.  
  
“Yo!” Kit called.  
  
Lily laughed. “I’ll pass.”  
  
The ship’s intervox crackled, and a serene voice came on.  
  
_“Good evening, everyone,”_ Yuna said gently. _“We’re about to translate into hyperspace. Everyone, please prepare for the jump.”_ _  
_  
“Oh!” Lily said, pulling out her comm. “I should get this text out while I can.”  
  
She flicked her thumb down the screen, scrolling.  
  
**_Lila_** _: ...talk, talk, talk. I feel like all I ever do is talk. It makes my mouth dry, just thinking about it. But the first round of interviews is done, and I might have a new mission for you, soon._ _  
_**_Lila_** _: Oh, and Lily?_ _  
_**_Lila_** _: I love you._ _  
_**_Lila_** _: I hope it’s not too scary, or lonely, out there in the void._  
  
Lily smiled, typing.  
  
**_Lily_** _: I love you too, Lila._ _  
_**_Lily_** _: And you know what? It’s not that bad._ _  
_**_Lily_** _: I think I’ll be just fine._ _  
_  
Lily breathed out a sigh, more content than melancholy, cast in the light of her holocomm.  
  
“How is she?” Kit asked, somber.  
  
Lily managed a smile.  
  
“If I know Lila? Bored out of her skull. Stuck on a secret base somewhere, with only her interrogator to keep her company?” Lily laughed. “I’d say she got the short end of the stick.”  
  
“Maybe she’ll get to be part of the cool crew, someday,” Kit teased.  
  
“Oh, yes?” Aabha asked sweetly. “Then where will _you_ be?”  
  
Kit rolled her eyes. “Punk…”  
  
“You love it,” Aabha chirped.  
  
There was a shudder through the deck. The Sparrow’s drive core lit, and blasted the ship into hyperspace with a sudden jolt that rolled Lily right off her bed. She fell on the floor with a smack.  
  
“Ow! Fuck!” Lily squealed, giggling madly.  
  
“Are you okay?!” Kit asked, stifling snickers.  
  
Aabha snapped her fingers, and a wisp of conjured fire came to life. She offered her hand, and pulled Lily back up. Lily sat back on her bed, grinning.  
  
“...Yeah, see, that’s the kind of shit that’s gonna take some getting used to…” Lily said, rueful.  
  
“Don’t worry,” Aabha said.  
  
“We’ve got you,” Kit chimed in.  
  
And as she lay there, cast in the warm light of Aabha’s wisp, Lily found herself smiling.  
  
Because they _did_ have her. They really did.  
  
The girls stayed up for hours, talking and laughing in the frail, tender firelight, as the Sparrow lit its engines and shot into the dark.  
  
~*~


End file.
